The pasts exists....accept it Craig.....You can't admire people from a distance

Most people who are hated have to earn their title. My husband probably doesn't deserve to be hated, yet the latent bitterness I have for him  resurfaced today in a way I could only call timing.  He is not really a tangible part of me yet he is a faded memory post in the position of my brain of recall that is undeniable.  We separated in 1993, divorced in 1994.  Our child, Alexis Hoffman, died on Christmas Day 1992.  Its hard to come back from that kind of loss, a loss as real and your own flesh driven into the ground, yet the better part of you.  He had been intermittently COLD BLOODED on and off for years. A cold blooded liar that only came out with death by marriage confessions in the final hour of the marriage.  He carried his own anger for me around like a shield that dropped suddenly like a dull, wooden sword, the ace of betrayal he had been holding in his sleeve since I slept with James Harris in Virginia, the Michael Jackson look a like before face distortion.  I was 24 when I fucked up or cheated and that was a consequential riveting moment in my life.  Not to mention the fact that James impregnated me while I was married and I carried the child six months and Craig agreed to raise it.  I had a miscarriage at 23 weeks.  My marriage still lasted another 8 years until I bore my own child in 1991.  She was a sweet, beautiful child that ended up having cardio-myopathy due to a virus that damaged her heart at four months.  The virus source and type is unknown, it was a common virus that damaged an organ which happens to one in 10,000 people.

I had been thinking of Craig today and the possibility of meeting his new wife whom I am FB friends with and talked with before over the phone.  We now live about four hours apart.  I can see the look of disapproval on Craig's face when I went to Wausau when he freshly moved there in 1994.  I had a pink, short dress on and he seemed really pissed I stopped to drop something off.  I can't even remember what it was.  I think now when I opened my facebook page and his wife remarked "Woke up from a nap in Myrtle Beach, SC."  I think what made me angry is I can't pay my rent this month and they are on vacation.  I wouldn't call in jealous, just a simple reminder that I don't have a sugar daddy, a daddy or a husband.

Then again, she can have him.  I wrote her that I had not responded to her Jan. 1 message because I had been angry at her (my ex) husband for months for not responding to the invitation to have a vigil for our the 20th anniversary of our daughter's death.   I felt like the time was notable enough and the passage of time that any bad bones or resentments were long buried that we could acknowledge each other face to face as parents of a loss child.  But Craig could never be capable of such a reunion.  I am long buried, just like my child.  I am no longer significant.  He has a new family and a new mission.  Not necessarily a love or passion, just a time filler.  i am glad he has grown to love his beautiful grandchild, Mc_____, but he can't be a part of the future when he denies his full past.

He can't resolve it so I will.  I will by telling the whole world this story, which will part of my bigger novel, my autobiography.  This will be in Chapter 52.  just sayin.

Finally, I felt I had to set the record straight tonight with his wife.  One week after my child was buried in the ground, Craig asked me to go back to work after I was forced to quit my job when she was ill.  His wife as far as I know has never worked the 17 years they have been married.  He has had to pull the full weight of all her kids having babies so she can babysit her grandkids for free while he works.  If they were my flesh and blood, I would work full time to help my children, not depend on a non blood kin to pay for my kid's illegimate children.  Would I marry a man and then expect him to pay for my kid's child care costs.  Hell to the no.  Craig has changed his value system.  I am glad he feels that is his responsibility but it is not his obligation to pay for his wife's kids child care costs which means his wife can't work because her own kids can't afford day care.  I could see it for 1 year but not five or six.  That is simply taking advantage of someone.
 AND STOP SENDING STUPID ASS SYRUPY LETTERS TO MY SISTER IN SAN FRANCISCO WITH YOUR LAMENTING THOUGHTS, POST-SHADOWY GUILTY FOR THE LOVE YOU COULD NEVER GIVE.   FUCK YOU FOREVER.


epilogue
  I have been a single parent for 14.5 years and can only say out of convenience I named my son a Hoffman.  It was a short, convienent  name that I somehow adopted thru marriage, a nominal, shifty name, a common name that has no attachment except a trail of history in which he inherited.  Loran, my son, is a Badio, his father;s lineage but he bears the Hoffman name.  He didn't take my dead daughter's place, but he bears the same name as Alexis.  That's what makes Loran special.  I survived Craig, and Craig's efficiency to become a mom and a do it alone mom with no shame.  Craig did alot of the cleaning and organizing in our marriage.  Now I can be the kind of parent I want, cleaning when needed but not to compete, I don't have a husband to answer to and its easier that way.